Again, who the heck cares what Santorum meant to say or not say? It doesn't really matter. He's an odious man who ought not be in the nomination conversation anyway. The fact that he is points to the fact that we've got deeper problems. At this point, anyone who will vote for Santorum is just going to vote for him no matter what. He could come out in a white hood and call Obama all sorts of foul, horrible things, and his supporters would say something along the lines of "yeah." Or maybe "he's the only candidate brave enough to stand up to the worst president this nation has ever seen. He's telling the hard truths."

Let's talk about Romney and his endorsement of the Ryan budget instead. That actually has bearing on the primary. Ryan's budget is a terrible thing that cuts services to the poor, raises military spending, and cuts taxes on the rich (paid for by those spending cuts). It pushes deficit closure out another three decades compared to the baseline of doing absofuckinglutely nothing (which, of course, means allowing all the Bush tax cuts to sunset). Romney is supposed to be "The Business" candidate. Endorsing this budget does not show business acumen. I don't know how he expects to sustain his reputation as a smart financials guy through the general when he continues to do shit like this.

Garm wrote:Let's talk about Romney and his endorsement of the Ryan budget instead. That actually has bearing on the primary. Ryan's budget is a terrible thing that cuts services to the poor, raises military spending, and cuts taxes on the rich (paid for by those spending cuts). It pushes deficit closure out another three decades compared to the baseline of doing absofuckinglutely nothing (which, of course, means allowing all the Bush tax cuts to sunset). Romney is supposed to be "The Business" candidate. Endorsing this budget does not show business acumen. I don't know how he expects to sustain his reputation as a smart financials guy through the general when he continues to do shit like this.

Endorsing this budget shows excellent business acumen. Romney's business was to latch onto companies, harvest their resources, and leave their ruined husks for a new host. In two decades the Ryan plan will have sucked all the juicy marrow out of the United States and Romney, now swollen with funds, will be free to migrate to Canada, where the cycle of life can begin anew.

Ohhhh, you meant business acumen in terms of sustaining the business, not making money. My mistake.

To be fair to Romney, if he can suck more money out of the company than the company was otherwise worth, he is helping the total economy. Sort of. It's weird as he helps himself more than he hurts others, so technically the world is a better place with him. But if you have an ethical system where you base right and wrong on the world excluding yourself (e.g., is the rest of the world better off by having you exist) then no, taking more from the company than the company is worth is not an arbitrarily defined "good" action.

I think the endorsement lacks business acumen because the budget doesn't actually do anything to turn the country around in the way that Bain has successfully operated with the businesses that you guys mentioned. The budget makes a lot of supply-side assumptions, takes money away from where it's needed and assigns it to where it's not. I may have already stated this on this board somewhere but I believe that this is less a budget and more a blueprint for cultural hegemony. It's a right-wing wet dream where the rich are supported on the backs of the poor. Strangely enough, however, this most recent Ryan 'budget' is less regressive than earlier offerings. It's still a steaming pile of horse shit.

edit to avoid double post: Here's Obama calling the Ryan 'budget' a steaming pile of horse shit but with nicer words and a lot more facts and stuff. You know... like he does: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/46941784#46941784I'm happy to see the president taking a hard line on this. It's important and I'm glad he realizes it.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - JFK

Not when the position they've flip flopped to is bigoted extremism. Then you just get both in the same package. Though, honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with flip-flopping in general -- being able to say "No, I was wrong" is important, especially for people making important decisions -- but Romney's issue is the frequency and breadth of his changes.

Ghostbear wrote:Not when the position they've flip flopped to is bigoted extremism. Then you just get both in the same package. Though, honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with flip-flopping in general -- being able to say "No, I was wrong" is important, especially for people making important decisions -- but Romney's issue is the frequency and breadth of his changes.

Garm wrote:Ryan's budget is a terrible thing that cuts services to the poor, raises military spending, and cuts taxes on the rich (paid for by those spending cuts). It pushes deficit closure out another three decades compared to the baseline of doing absofuckinglutely nothing (which, of course, means allowing all the Bush tax cuts to sunset).

Will Obama allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset? He didn't when he had a Democratic House and Senate, so won't this be an issue where both candidates sit on the same (wrong) side of the issue?

It really doesn't matter how terrible the Ryan budget is, in that the main point raised by the GOP will be that it balances the budget. The narrative will be that Obama's budget is like a freight train headed for a cliff (supported by the fact that he's spent more in 3 years than Bush did in 8), and if we don't take drastic measures the economy will a-splode, or something. Obama will not counter with less terrible cuts, but rather with another mega-huge budget, which he will claim will really, for sure, solve the recession this time. He'll probably make up a new word for it too, like econo-covery, now that stimulus is out of style.

Page 92 shows revenue at 19% of GDP and Spending at 20.25% of GDP in 2030. It takes almost until 2040 to balance the budget: Revenues will still be at 19% of GDP while spending will be down to 18.75%.

Two notes: the first is that this is taking Ryan's budget at its word when it says that it will massively reduce (completely unspecified, but generally very popular) tax expenditures, if he doesn't manage to do this, the revenues brought in will plummet. The second is that time frame appears to refer to overall balance, sometimes you see budgets described in terms of primary balance (Revenues=Spending on everything besides interest payments). The Ryan budget would reach primary balance earlier, though the summary charts don't contain enough detail to know when.

However (again assuming that the unspecified reductions in tax expenditures occur) Ryan's budget does get closer to balance in the next decade than the President's. The 10 year average projected deficit for Ryan's budget is 1.7% (his numbers) while for Obama's it's 4.7%.

Erm, no. Saying that the debt has increased more in the last three years than it did in the previous eight is NOT the same thing as saying that the country has spent more in the last three years than it did in the previous eight. While outlays ARE up by a fair bit over that time period, part of the reason that the deficiet has skyrocketed is due to the fact that receipts decreased when the economy tanked.

Sigh. The Bush tax cuts were kept around because Obama wanted the cuts for the middle class to stay in effect with the hope they would keep money flowing in the economy. The GOP and the Blue Dog Democrats threw a giant bitch-fit and threatened to shut down the government unless the rich people also got to keep their tax cuts. Because job creation, confidence fairies, and everyone gets a pony that's why (let's just ignore the marginal rate of savings because electing folks who will find competent advisers on economics is too hard to even imagine). To say that Obama kept the Bush tax cuts even when he had a majority in both houses is to ignore all the context ever.

That CBS article is another case of ignoring all the context ever. To just compare the gross amount of debt added is to ignore the deep recession that Obama inherited from Bush. It's lazy journalism. Kind of like saying that Bush II was more a more popular president than FDR because he got more votes nationally during his reelection campaign.

Obama HAS proposed cuts. He's directed the congress to make cuts, he just wants to balance it out with revenue growth.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - JFK

I'll just point out here that while you guys have a government that increased spending and are now out of recession and have net jobs growth, here in the UK we went for slash and burn deficit reduction, and are now in a double dip recession and ever increasing unemployment. But, hey. You totally want to do it our way.

bentheimmigrant wrote:I'll just point out here that while you guys have a government that increased spending and are now out of recession and have net jobs growth, here in the UK we went for slash and burn deficit reduction, and are now in a double dip recession and ever increasing unemployment. But, hey. You totally want to do it our way.

I am not sure that and that alone are responsible. I mean, honestly the UK is probably still spending more per person then the US. One could make the argument that the small(austere) government of the US is the reason we are heading out.

I apologize, 90% of the time I write on the Fora I am intoxicated.

Yakk wrote:The question the thought experiment I posted is aimed at answering: When falling in a black hole, do you see the entire universe's future history train-car into your ass, or not?

That may be fair, and obviously our proximity to the Euro has a lot to do with it too, but much was made over the opposite approaches here (and I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it on American sites) a year or two ago. Relatedly, there was also a lot of praise coming from the American right of Ireland's approach, IIRC - I think that's died down a bit now.

bentheimmigrant wrote:That may be fair, and obviously our proximity to the Euro has a lot to do with it too, but much was made over the opposite approaches here (and I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it on American sites) a year or two ago. Relatedly, there was also a lot of praise coming from the American right of Ireland's approach, IIRC - I think that's died down a bit now.

Sure, there was, but even at the time I questioned how much a contrast could be made. I mean is raising expenditures of relatively small government expenditures really the opposite of lower expenditures of relatively large government expenditures? Obviously not, but I thought back then that they were too big a difference to make a big deal out of comparing them.

Ireland did receive praise from the American right. But I don't think anyone expected Ireland to do better than America. Ireland doesn't have the favorable interest rates the US(or UK) have. It was going to have close its deficit somehow, either by lowering expenditures or higher revenues, which precludes it from the route the US took.

I apologize, 90% of the time I write on the Fora I am intoxicated.

Yakk wrote:The question the thought experiment I posted is aimed at answering: When falling in a black hole, do you see the entire universe's future history train-car into your ass, or not?

The praise of Ireland's austerity measures was also driven by a false dawn in economic progress. There was a small uptick which was hailed by proponents of austerity as the beginning of a new era. The economy dipped again and has since stagnated.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - JFK

Ghostbear wrote:Not when the position they've flip flopped to is bigoted extremism. Then you just get both in the same package. Though, honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with flip-flopping in general -- being able to say "No, I was wrong" is important, especially for people making important decisions -- but Romney's issue is the frequency and breadth of his changes.

Yeah. The problem is not politicians saying: "I know, in the past I supported our war against Eastasia, but it is not doing us any good. Eurasia is our real enemy". The problem is policians saying: "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia".

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist- Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister

Роберт wrote:So did anything important happen? I don't even get the title of this thread. Romney has been the likely candidate for a long time now and is still the likely candidate. Nothing seems to have changed.

There's been some noise in the news after yesterday's primaries about Romney having the delegates to cinch the Republican nomination, or rather that for a sudden reversal to favor Santorum would require near infinitely improbable circumstances. Romney doesn't have the technical delegates to be challenge-proof and so Santorum and Paul are still holding on to their respective faint and fading hopes of nomination.

That said I do agree with Ghostbear that this should be folded in to the Republican Primaries thread.

We're in the traffic-chopper over the XKCD boards where there's been a thread-derailment. A Liquified Godwin spill has evacuated threads in a fourty-post radius of the accident, Lolcats and TVTropes have broken free of their containers. It is believed that the Point has perished.

mmmcannibalism wrote:There is a difference between flopping and changing your mind.

Certainly, but in politics, at least, it's not at all uncommon for them to just be treated as the same thing. I was just pointing out that I do see the distinction between the two, and that Romney definitely falls in the category of a true "whatever stance it takes to win votes" politician.

Роберт wrote:So did anything important happen? I don't even get the title of this thread. Romney has been the likely candidate for a long time now and is still the likely candidate. Nothing seems to have changed.

Basically, Wisconsin represented the last of the last of Santorum's chances to turn the race around. Michigan and Ohio were his last chances to turn the race around and get on a majority delegate path (winning without a brokered convention). Illinois was his last chance to get on a plurality delegate path (brokered convention, but having more delegates than Romney). Wisconsin was his last chance to get on the path of preventing Romney from getting a majority of delegates and winning outright. Essentially, the only winning path left for Santorum is for Romney to be found to be a former porn star or to just die outright. Which aren't exactly very good hopes to base a campaign around.

As far as I can tell, two things have changed. 1. Santorum has started facing calls to drop out of the race for the sake of party unity (he said no)2. Obama's re-election campaign has started talking about Romney specifically, rather than the Republican party as a whole.

That's been going on a while actually, Santorum (and Gingrich* for that matter) has been facing calls to drop out for at least a couple weeks now (since around the Illiniois primary).

Can't speak much for the ads though, the only Obama ads have been on Hulu/youtube and they're all pro-current president ads, I don't recall seeing any addressing Romney yet. Then again TV is probably another ballpark (PA primaries coming up soon, so I'm sure if I had cable I would be seeing a deluge about in the next week or two).

SlyReaper wrote:As far as I can tell, two things have changed. 1. Santorum has started facing calls to drop out of the race for the sake of party unity (he said no)2. Obama's re-election campaign has started talking about Romney specifically, rather than the Republican party as a whole.

Neither of those are new this month.

The Great Hippo wrote:[T]he way we treat suspected terrorists genuinely terrifies me.

Adacore wrote:Yeah, Romney has been statistically near-certain to win since super Tuesday, basically.

This fact wasn't as important to Santorum because he has outperformed recent polls during super Tuesday. The statistical likelihood of it happening depended on Santorum performing as expected, not overperforming. Now, Santorum is doing so bad that he is underperforming his polls, and losing states by large margins. In addition, he isn't winning by large margins states that he should have won.

sardia wrote:Now, Santorum is doing so bad that he is underperforming his polls, and losing states by large margins.

That actually isn't true. Santorum is still over-performing his poll numbers. The problem is just that the poll numbers put him further behind than he can make up with his over-performance; it doesn't matter if you outdo your polling numbers by 5 points, if you were behind by 15.

I'm sticking with my explanation for why this is "the end" that I already posted above though: this was the 100% absolute last chance Santorum had to change the dynamics of the race such that he had some plausibly non-miracle based path to the nomination. He lost his chance at winning outright long ago, then he lost his chance to win a plurality of delegates, then he lost his chance to prevent Romney from getting a plurality, and now he's lost his chance to prevent Romney from winning a majority. There is reasonable path that Santorum can take to win the nomination now.

True, but I'm still pretty confident that Romney can't win. All else being equal, Americans elect incumbents 70% of the time. And considering that the economy is getting better and that the republican party is self-destructing hard, I really don't see Romney winning.

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

I'd agree that Obama is a favorite to win, I think you're basing your analysis on overfitting prior data points. I mean, before 2008, the winner of Missouri had become the president in every election since 1956 (and in all but one election since 1904). Don't base your analysis on what Americans have done in the past: base it on what Americans are going to do now.

For those of us that didn't follow the primary, what does this Romney guy stand for nowadays?What I'm getting so far is that he's changed his mind a lot, and mostly towards christian extremist positions.

Bertrand Russell wrote:Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Richard Feynman & many others wrote:Keep an open mind – but not so open that your brain falls out

jules.LT wrote:For those of us that didn't follow the primary, what does this Romney guy stand for nowadays?What I'm getting so far is that he's changed his mind a lot, and mostly towards christian extremist positions.

Romney stands for Romney. He'll say whatever he needs to to become president. In general he's for the plutocracy. He's running mostly on economic issues, not social issues, and on those he's endorsed the Ryan budget (tax cuts for the rich not quite paid for by cuts to the social safety net). He's perceived as being out of touch with the common man, as being robotic and fake, and as somebody you wouldn't want to have a beer with (if only because Mormons don't drink). He's "electable" but his base is unenthusiastic, particularly after a long, drawn-out primary season that got very ugly at times.

Look for him to tack back to the middle in the general but with mixed results given the flip-flopping perceptions. There'll be several ridiculous gaffes and at least one ad from his SuperPAC with racist undertones; Republicans will reluctantly gather around him but the Democrats will win the enthusiasm gap this go-around. Both Romney and Obama will have trouble picking up moderates, but tie goes to the incumbent. If Romney wins, it'll be very close, Bush 3, bad for anti-corporatists, bad for the economy (especially with the Republican Senate sneaking in under his coattails), and 60% chance of war with Iran (but at least he'll get credit for presiding over the tail end of the recovery). But he won't win.